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The SKIN Project by Shelley Jackson. the Tattooed Text As a Mortal Work of Art

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The SKIN Project by Shelley Jackson. the Tattooed Text As a Mortal Work of Art The SKIN Project by Shelley Jackson. The Tattooed Text as a Mortal Work of Art. Marie Bouchet To cite this version: Marie Bouchet. The SKIN Project by Shelley Jackson. The Tattooed Text as a Mortal Work of Art.. La Peaulogie - Revue de sciences sociales et humaines sur les peaux, La Peaulogie 2020, La littérature dans la peau : tatouages et imaginaires., pp.145-169. halshs-02567841 HAL Id: halshs-02567841 https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-02567841 Submitted on 28 Sep 2020 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution| 4.0 International License | 2020 La Peaulogie 4 La littérature dans le peau Tatouages et imaginaires PRINTEMPS 2020 NUMÉRO 4 Lignes, tracés graphiques, surfaces encrées, impressions, parchemins et vélins sont autant de termes que le tatouage partage avec l’écriture. Entre les objets scripteurs, les gestes de l’écriture ou du dessin et l’aiguille du tatoueur se noue une relation sensible et palpable. Le littéraire fait retour sur la peau qui elle-même se transforme en archive et devient l’objet d’une mise en fiction des corps. Ce numéro interdisciplinaire consacré à la littérature dans la peau aborde le tatouage, non plus comme un motif graphique uniquement visuel, mais comme un support narratif propre à la fiction. Comment la littérature s’empare-t-elle du tatouage ? Comment des genres aussi divers que le récit d’aventures, le roman à sensation, le thriller, l’œuvre postcoloniale ou encore les fictions hypertextuelles, mettent-elles en récit le corps tatoué ? Ce numéro explore à la fois le rapport sensoriel de l’écriture au corps, l’expérience de la douleur de la chair, l’affleurement du souvenir, la réinvention identitaire, sans pour autant négliger la valeur de l’écriture tégumentaire comme marque de la révélation participant de la mécanique du récit. Le tatouage inspiré de sources littéraires peut prendre différentes formes, portraits d’écrivains, citations, illustrations, qui sont à l’interface entre l’espace privé et la sphère intime, entre le visible et le lisible. Étudier les tatouages de lecteurs ou de fans permet ainsi de mieux comprendre le désir d’archiver le fragment littéraire à même la peau, d’incarner le littéraire dans sa dimension corporelle, parfois jusqu’à l’excès, tout en interrogeant la circulation ainsi que la réception des œuvres référencées. LA PEAULOGIE The SKIN Project by Shelley Jackson 145 THE SKIN PROJECT BY SHELLEY JACKSON THE TATTOOED TEXT AS A “MORTAL WORK OF ART” Marie BOUCHET Référence électronique Bouchet M., (2020), « The SKIN project by Shelley Jackson. The tattooed text as a “mortal work of art”. », La PremiersPeaulogie Pas 4, mis en ligne le 5 mai 2020, [En ligne] URL : http://lapeaulogie.fr/skin‑project‑Lashelley Peaulogie,‑jackson 2 | 2018 146 The SKIN project by Shelley Jackson: the tattooed text as a “mortal work of art” RÉSUMÉ En 2003, Shelley Jackson lança en ligne un appel à volontaires destiné à trouver des personnes acceptant de faire tatouer sur leur peau l’un des 2 095 mots de sa nouvelle « Skin » — une tentative de publier le texte sur un support qui reflète son contenu. Une fois le tatouage fait (et prouvé par l’envoi d’une photo), l’auteure adressait à chaque participant (qu’elle appelle « ses mots ») le texte complet de la nouvelle, qui devait rester secret. Jackson reçut plus de 22 000 courriels pour ce projet, et envoya leur mot à tatouer à 1 875 personnes sélectionnées. Au final le projet SKIN ne put être achevé, car l’un de « ses » mots décéda avant que la nouvelle ne fut complètement imprimée/tatouée. Cet article explore la relation complexe entre éternité et finitude que tisse un tel projet. En effet, d’un côté la littérature est perçue comme un art éternel (selon le topos de l’auteur vivant éternellement à travers ses livres), et le tatouage est également considéré comme un marquage permanent, un geste d’encrage comparable à celui de l’impression de textes. Le projet SKIN prend toutefois le contrepied de cet aspect, car dès le départ Shelley Jackson avait conscience que cette expérimentation avec les techniques d’impression produirait « une œuvre d’art mortelle » ( Jackson, 2002). Le projet SKIN souligne donc le caractère éphémère du tatouage, en une sorte de memento mori. Cet article analyse également les traces que le tatouage littéraire original a laissées, à savoir, d’une part, le site internet où Jackson lança son appel, présenta le projet et produisit une carte localisant les mots de sa nouvelle. La deuxième trace du projet initial est un sous‑texte de la nouvelle originelle, texte non imprimé sur le papier mais présenté sous forme d’une vidéo montée par Jackson en 2011 à partir des 200 vidéos YouTube, réalisées par certains « mots », dans lesquelles les participants se filment en train de montrer et prononcer à haute voix leur mot tatoué. Cette autre nouvelle, dermographiquement dérivée de la première, combine donc littérature, tatouage, art conceptuel, image et son. MOTS CLEFS Shelley Jackson, peau, tatouage, finitude, éternité, mortalité La Peaulogie, 4 | 2020 La littérature dans le peau : tatouages et imaginaires. The SKIN project by Shelley Jackson: the tattooed text as a “mortal work of art” 147 ABSTRACT The SKIN project began in 2003 with Shelley Jackson sending out an online call for volunteers to find people who would be willing to have one of the 2,095 words of her short story “Skin” tattooed on their own body, in an attempt at “publishing in forms that reflected their content” (Daffern, 2012). In exchange for their tattoo (duly proven by a printed photograph), Jackson sent the participants the story she wrote, which was to remain secret. She received over 22,000 emails for the project, and sent their word to 1,875 applicants whom she selected, but she never completed the project because one of “her words” passed away before the full story was tattooed/printed. This article delves into the complex relationship between eternity and finitude that such a project entails. Indeed, on the one hand, literature is perceived as an art inscribed in eternity (with the topos of a writer living on through his/her works after death), and tattoos are also conceived as something permanent, an inking gesture similar to that of a printing machine. Yet, on the other hand, with the SKIN project, Shelley Jackson had very early in mind that this experiment with printing material would produce a “mortal work of art” ( Jackson, 2002). The project therefore foregrounds the ephemeral nature of tattooing, in a memento mori gesture. The article also explores the traces of this unique literary tattoo in the other two forms through which the SKIN project can be experienced: first, the website that called for volunteers, exposed the project and even displays a map of the location of each word. The second trace of the tattooed text takes the form of a sub‑story, a video Jackson edited herself in 2011, using the home‑made videos posted on You Tube by over 200 “words” who filmed themselves saying and showing their word, thus combining literature, tattoo art, conceptual art, images and sound. KEYWORDS Shelley Jackson, skin, tattoo, finitude, eternity, mortality La littérature dans le peau : tatouages et imaginaires. La Peaulogie, 4 | 2020 148 The SKIN project by Shelley Jackson: the tattooed text as a “mortal work of art” INTRODUCTION Shelley Jackson was born in 1963 in the Philippines, but was raised in Berkeley, CA. She holds a B.A. in art (Stanford University) and a M.F.A. in creative writing (Brown University), and is therefore both a writer and an artist, whose work is characterized by experiments crossing genres and mediums. Her work is characterized by explorations of the possibilities of publishing, and attempts at expanding the potential of print culture. She published two novels, a collection of short stories, three children’s books, and three hypertexts (among which Patchwork Girl, 1995). She also illustrated a book for children, and some of her own works (My Body)[1]. Her artistic practice is thus transmedial, and her creative output often is intersemiotic. A few words ought to be said about Patchwork Girl, because in many ways it really is the first step Jackson took before the SKIN Project. Patchwork Girl is a hypertextual novel, which was never published in a book form, and Jackson explained she never even thought of doing so. She elaborated an original story by borrowing from three literary sources, one being the paradigmatic monster narrative, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the second being the sequel to the uber‑famous children’s book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) by L. Frank Baum, entitled The Patchwork Girl of Oz (1913) with the Scraps character, and the third being, as Arnaud Regnauld showed, Derrida’s Dissemination (Regnauld, 2009, 73). It is the story of a female monster assembled by Mary Shelley herself, who then becomes her creature’s lover; the creature then travels to America, where she goes through many adventures before disintegrating after a 175‑year lifetime. Individual sections of the novel also explore the lives of some of the women whose corpses contributed body parts to the creature.
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